On June 30, the box office of "Life Events" in the week of release exceeded 500 million yuan. This put an end to the film market in the first half of the year.
According to the preliminary statistics of the National Film Special Funding Office, as of June 30, 2022, the total box office for the whole year was 17.180 billion yuan; the total number of people was 398 million; the box office of domestic films was 14.538 billion yuan, and the share of domestic films was 84.62%. There were 22 films with a box office of over 100 million yuan in the whole year, 15 of which were made in China and 7 were imported.
In the first half of this year, the film market experienced a process of high opening and low going low and then slowly recovering. Liu Zhenfei, a data analyst at Maoyan Research Institute, believes that from the perspective of overall output value, it must be lower than expected, but considering the continuous impact of the epidemic on the market from March to May, the evaluation of the performance of the film market in the first half of the year cannot be assessed only from the overall quantitative dimension.
Before the impact of the epidemic, the box office output in January and February this year was as much as 13 billion, of which in February, under the relay of the Spring Festival file and the "Valentine's Day file", the single-month box office once again exceeded 10 billion, and it is still the only market in the world that can reach the single-month box office output value of more than 10 billion yuan.
Since then, from the end of May to the beginning of June, with the effective control of the epidemic, the national cinema business has exceeded 70% and 80% after taking the lead, and the market has once again shown a rapid recovery trend: on May 30, the national single-day box office was only 8.38 million, and ten days later, on June 10, the national single-day box office rose to 105 million, ending the previous 103-day failure of the market to break through the 100 million yuan mark. In the end, the box office in June 2022 reached 1.920 billion, which was basically the same as 2.102 billion yuan in the same period last year, and it was also the same as the total of 2.196 billion yuan in the three months from March to May, which was previously affected by the epidemic.
Compared with the total box office of only 17.18 billion yuan in the first half of the year, Liu Zhenfei believes that "what we should see more is that the Chinese film market has once again shown its ability to recover quickly after getting out of the predicament, which reflects the audience's love and support for the form of cinema viewing and the content of movies." ”
Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, believes that under this circumstance, the film industry should show more tenacity and learn how to expand the means and methods of film in the context of the epidemic to achieve limited survival and development. "In any case, filmmakers should seize such a period of time, practice their internal skills, and improve their abilities so that they can make more high-quality films in the future."
The world's only market with a monthly output of more than 10 billion yuan
The New Year's Day file opened the 2022 film market, with a three-day period of revenue of 1.021 billion yuan at the box office. "Embracing You Through The Cold Winter", "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" and "Li Mao Dressed as a Prince" became the top three box office in the New Year's Day file, winning more than 700 million yuan at the box office, and the total number of moviegoers in the file exceeded 24 million.
Judging from the data, the New Year's Day file has made a good start for this year's market.
The boiling point of the film market in the first half of the year came from the Spring Festival file. Thanks to the world's leading terminal construction scale and layout, the Spring Festival file received a box office of 6.039 billion yuan in 7 days, setting off a movie-watching boom, boosting market confidence, and attracting a total of 114 million people to watch movies during the period, catching up with the pre-epidemic level (5.9 billion yuan in the 2019 Spring Festival file).
Compared with previous years, this year's Spring Festival file has shown a "super head" market pattern due to the airborne fixation of "Chosin Lake Watergate Bridge", whether from the perspective of word-of-mouth public opinion or pre-sale, "Watergate Bridge" is absolutely leading. This pattern has not changed since the real opening of the painting. With the "Chosin Lake" IP popularity continuation + high combustion war scenes, "Watergate Bridge" won 641 million yuan at the box office on the first day, and as of the evening of February 7, it had reached 2.7 billion yuan, leading the way.
The larger the schedule, the more fierce the competition, and the easier it is to give birth to a miracle moment, the 2019 Spring Festival file "The Wandering Earth", the 2021 Spring Festival file "Hello, Li Huanying" have become box office dark horses, bringing surprises to the market, and the 2022 Spring Festival file has also appeared several small counterattack dark horse works. "This Killer Is Not Calm", "Miracle Stupid Kid", "Sniper" 3 movies performed beyond expectations. "This Killer Is Not Too Calm" was flat at the box office the next day and the first day, and on the third day, it began a small counterattack, out of a steady climbing counterattack curve. The same is true of Miracle Stupid Kid and Sniper. The counterattack of these 3 films is still "excellent quality + word of mouth diffusion". The first day of these three films reached a score of more than 9.3 points on each ticketing platform, because the excellent quality met the audience's viewing expectations and seized the valuable slot dividend.
From February to June this year, many theaters in first-tier cities were absent due to the counterattack of the epidemic. As a result, many films were temporarily withdrawn before the "Qingming File" and "May Day File".
Looking back at the first half of the year, the single-month box office was the highest in February, reaching 10.356 billion. In February, under the relay leverage of the Spring Festival file and the "Valentine's Day file", the single-month box office once again exceeded 10 billion yuan, and it is still the only market in the world that can reach the single-month box office output value of more than 10 billion yuan.
In the first half of this year, more than one billion yuan of films were born in the Spring Festival file, namely "The Water Gate Bridge of Chosin Lake", "This Killer Is Not Too Cold", "Miracle Stupid Child"; Over 500 million films include "Bear Haunting, Return to Earth", "Jurassic World 3", "Sniper", "Four Seas", "Life Events" and other 5 films; Over 14 films include "Li Mao Dressed as Prince", "Bad Guy League", "Fantastic Beasts: The Mystery of Dumbledore", "Ten Years of Warm Words", "Edgewalker", "I Really Hate Long-distance Love", "New Batman", "Pleasant Goat and Gray Wolf Basket Out of the Future", "MoonFall", "Uncharted Sea", "Crush Orange Sheng Huainan", "Elf Hostel 4: Transformation Adventure", "Good to Go to Your World love you", "Doraemon: Nobita's Cosmic War 2021" and other 14 films.
Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Filmmakers Association and professor at Tsinghua University, said that due to the impact of the epidemic on both ends of the supply and demand of the film industry, the box office of the Chinese film market in half a year is less than 20 billion, and the main problems that currently exist are the insufficient number of head films, which is difficult to drive market heat; Second, the quality and impact of the imported film have not met expectations, leaving a gap in the market; Third, the audience is affected by the economic environment, media substitution, and epidemic interference, and the demand and habits of watching movies have changed.
In his view, to get out of the trough, it is not only necessary to pay attention to the production and distribution layout of head films of different genres, different themes and different styles in addition to the main theme films, so as to ensure the richness of supply; It is also necessary to start a series of activities to return the audience to the cinema and re-cultivate the audience's viewing needs. In short, both the supply and demand sides need to use special forces to solve specific difficulties.
The box office gathers towards high-quality slots
Looking back at the first half of the year, the total box office of the "Spring Festival file" in 2022 was 6.039 billion yuan, and it is worth noting that the top three films in the current box office this year were all released in the Spring Festival file.
In addition to the "Spring Festival stall", there are three small slots in the first half of the year. In 2022, the box office of "Qingming File" was 122 million yuan, the "May 1st File" was 295 million yuan, and the "Dragon Boat Festival" was 179 million yuan.
Since mid-March, affected by the epidemic, the national cinema sales rate has declined rapidly, and for a month from late March to late April, the national cinema sales rate has hovered at a valley of less than 50%.
The large loss of the market screening end will naturally disrupt the original plan of the popular film, and the number of new films that Maoyan wants to see every week in the film market from March to May is not more than 3, which directly leads to the lack of sufficient viewing atmosphere in the film market. From March to May, the average number of people per game in a single month was only 3 people per game, and the loss of the screening side directly affected the supply of popular films, which in turn made the audience lack the motivation to continue to enter the theater.
It is worth noting that in the Qingming holiday, May Day holiday, Dragon Boat Festival, in the case of a limited number of new films, the national market on the holiday day still recorded a super excellent increase of 1 to 2 times growth, and the trend of the holiday market was also extremely stable. Liu Zhenfei believes that this reflects the stable demand of the audience to enter the theater during the holiday. From Qingming, May Day, to the Dragon Boat Festival, the average daily box office has also shown a continuous upward trend from 40.68 million, 59.47 million, 59.6 million, although the supply of popular new films in the market during the epidemic is limited, but the audience still shows a rising enthusiasm for watching movies.
Sun Jiashan, an associate researcher at the China Academy of Arts, believes that between the Spring Festival and the summer file, there can be 3 small periods, which is very valuable for the film box office structure and has positive industrial significance. "Because they can hold up the gap between the two big slots of the Spring Festival file and the summer file, it is not only valuable to the box office structure and theater operation, but also helpful to the adjustment of the production capacity structure of the film genre." Real blockbusters will only choose to be released in large slots, so small and medium-budget films have more space in the Qingming file, the Dragon Boat Festival, and the May Day file. ”
The data shows that in the first half of 2022, the box office contributed by the Spring Festival, Qingming, May Day, Dragon Boat Festival and other holiday slots accounted for 44.6% of the market, compared with 43.9% in the same period of 2021. "You must know that this is still achieved under the circumstance that the three holidays of Qingming, May Day and Dragon Boat Festival, lack of enough popular films, so that the schedule has not been able to play its due benefits." Liu Zhenfei analyzed that after the epidemic in 2020, the film market has not been able to operate normally for nearly half a year, which makes the pressure on the film party to recover funds even greater, and when the key projects in hand are put on the market, they are naturally more inclined to choose the hot slot with higher output value.
However, for the audience, popular films continue to tend to be released in the popular slots, which will make the viewing tendency to continue to concentrate on the popular slots, which in turn will drive the production capacity of the popular slots to continue to rise, and the production capacity of the non-slots will continue to decline.
From the perspective of market data, the box office contribution of the schedule is constantly increasing, but the dividend of the slot is still concentrated in a small number of head films.
Because in the popular period with limited time, the average number of movies viewed by the audience has not exceeded 1.2, which leads to films that fall at the waist and tail of the schedule, and even cannot play their due commercial potential.
"If you want to cultivate the habit of the audience to watch more movies in the schedule, it must also start from the non-schedule, the audience can also have popular new films to watch on weekdays, increasing the frequency of viewing movies, in the limited time of the popular period, in order to produce the willingness to watch more movies." Liu Zhenfei said that the choice of popular films to be released in non-popular slots is challenging for the filmmakers' decision-making.
However, from the perspective of the market environment in 2022, a number of popular films originally scheduled for release in the Qingming file, May Day and Dragon Boat Festival in the first half of the year have not been released as scheduled, and it is foreseeable that the competition around the hot schedule in the second half of 2022 will be more intense. In this case, some films that are not suitable for competing in popular schedules can choose a relatively relaxed environment for weekday release, after all, for the film market in 2022, the schedule without the impact of the epidemic is a good schedule.
Refined distribution explores box office increments
Since the end of March this year, due to the epidemic, many films have been withdrawn, and the market heat has dropped to the "freezing point". However, there are also some films that choose to "face the difficulties" in an attempt to convey positive beliefs. "Edgewalker" "broke the ice" on April 15 to fill the gap of new domestic films in April, and also injected vitality into the sluggish market, and finally the film won 166 million yuan at the box office.
Coincidentally, the romance film "I Really Hate Long-Distance Love" is a successful case of facing the pressure of the epidemic and driving the market to break the ice this year. The film was promoted at the end of February, initially scheduled for "520", and announced on March 11 that it would be filed on April 29. At the end of April, under the circumstance that a number of May 1 films announced the withdrawal of the file and the Shanghai and Beijing markets were shut down, "I Really Hate Long-distance Love" insisted on being staged as promised, stabilizing the market confidence of the May 1st show and also obtaining a box office of 165 million yuan.
In addition to these new films, there are also some old films looking for films that are deeply compatible with the genre and the tone of the schedule for refined distribution, such as the love film "I Want Us To Be Together" released on May 20 last year, which chose to be re-released on the same day this year, with a box office of 23.98 million yuan on the same day, refreshing the box office record on the first day of the domestic film re-screening.
Liu Zhenfei analyzed that the impact of this round of epidemic on the number of theaters in the country is significant, but it is worth noting that even during the period from late March to late April, when the operating rate hovered to the valley value, more than 5,000 theaters across the country were operating in an orderly manner. At the same time, since mid-March, the popular films released every week have been imported films, and the core audience of imported films is biased towards older men and audiences in first- and second-tier cities, which makes audiences, female audiences, young audiences, including third- and fourth-tier city audiences, who prefer domestic films, in a long-term state of lack of films to watch. “
Therefore, "Edgewalker" not only adhered to the original schedule of April 15, but also opened a four-day screening around the Qingming holiday, won more than 20 million box office, and harvested the dividends of the lack of domestic films in the market.
In the entire release cycle, although the single-day box office of "The Marginal Walker" did not exceed 7 million, relying on the dividends brought by the demand gap, the total box office stubbornly exceeded 160 million, meeting the audience's demand for domestic films during the epidemic. "I Really Hate Long-Distance Love" adheres to the May Day period, which also meets the needs of young audiences and female audiences, including audiences in third- and fourth-tier cities, for preferring films. On the day of the release of "I Really Hate Long-distance Love", the proportion of audiences under the age of 25 in the national market increased from 32% to 52%, as the highest new film that Cat's Eye wants to see during the May Day holiday, it won 88 million in the five days of the holiday, and finally achieved a box office performance of 165 million, and now ranks in the top three domestic love movies in 2022. ”
The release of popular new films is the fastest way to pull the audience back to the theater. During the epidemic holiday, the adherence of "Edgewalker" and "I Really Hate Long-distance Love" to the original schedule has played a role in boosting the market and activating the market for the market; For the film itself, based on objective and rational judgment, the film's box office performance is not only not affected by the discount on the screening side, but also enjoys the dividend of the lack of supply of staged film types, which shows that even under the influence of the epidemic, as long as it fully judges its own situation and market environment, sometimes "facing difficulties" is also a wise decision. Liu Zhenfei said.
Rao Shuguang believes that the Qingming file and the May 1st file, because of the epidemic in Shanghai and Beijing, the two major film box offices have suspended business, so it has a very big impact on the market trend of the entire film, and to a certain extent, it also affects some people's confidence in the future of the film.
In his opinion, the overall film market in April was relatively sluggish, but there were also some bright spots, such as "Borderwalker" and "I Really Hate Long-Distance Love", which achieved good box office results in the context of the market downturn.
"It shows that in the context of the epidemic, as long as the film itself has a good quality, or through film operation, marketing and other means, so that the film can get more people's attention, achieve good box office performance, there is no unexpected thing, there is no thing that can not be done, the key is that things are artificial, in the context of the epidemic, the film market can also make a difference." Rao Shuguang said, "To fundamentally change the view, the first thing is that the epidemic should be able to be effectively controlled, because the epidemic has a subtle impact on people's movie-watching mentality and movie-watching psychology." Of course, more high-quality films are needed, especially the head movie, to stimulate the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies, drive the market, and let everyone build confidence in the future of movies. ”
The market picked up a number of films to boost confidence
Since June, the film market has entered the longest and hottest slot of the year , the summer slot.
With the "double-file pro-door" of the June 1st and Dragon Boat Festivals, under the release of new films such as "Doraemon" and "Crush orange sheng Huainan", Wednesday's June 1st and Dragon Boat Festivals won 0.56 billion yuan and 179 million yuan respectively, which continued to improve slightly compared with the May 1st stalls. On June 10, "Jurassic World 3" began to draw, which also pushed the box office of the day to a high of 100 million yuan, which is also the second time since the film market that the single-day box office exceeded 100 million yuan; Officially released on June 24, "Life Events" won the second place in the June box office of 496 million in the month, and these two films successfully led to the recovery of the film market.
As of July 11, the cumulative box office of "Life Events" has exceeded 1.2 billion, which is not only the highest-grossing film after the Spring Festival in 2022, but also successfully entered the top 70 of the total box office list in Chinese film history, ranking second in the box office list of family-themed films in Chinese film history. Previously, "Jurassic World 3" has proved that popular films can quickly pull audiences back to the theater with the high heat attribute of big IP productions.
As a family drama film with no advantage in the theme and attention to the funeral industry, the popularity of "Life Events" is also another confirmation to the industry, as long as the content is high-quality enough, it can also attract the audience to enter the cinema.
At the same time, Life Events can make up for the limited audience of the imported movie Jurassic World 3. Although there are more than 400,000 cat's eye wants to see the higher popularity, but from the audience point of view, "Jurassic World 3" and the continuous release of "Uncharted Sea", "New Batman", "Moonfall", "Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore's Mystery" and other films released during the epidemic are inclined to male audiences, older audiences and first- and second-tier city audiences.
"The release of "Life Events" has effectively pulled more audiences in the sinking market of the third and fourth lines, adjusted the structure of the national market cities, and solved the problem of previous youth romance films such as "I really hate long-distance love", "Crush Orange Sheng Huainan", "Friends of the Week", and it is difficult to continue to pull women to watch movies." Liu Zhenfei commented.
Due to the decline in the supply of new films from March to May, the market has responded to a strong demand for many types of popular films, and the simultaneous screening of two billion box office popular films in China and abroad, "Life Events" and "Jurassic World 3", can adjust the balance of the viewing structure from multiple dimensions of gender, age and city level.
The story of "Life Events" is touching and emotionally sincere, and the scene of "Jurassic World 3" is shocking and entertaining, which can give the audience a clear and sufficient motivation to watch the movie. For the 2022 summer file, the excellent performance of the two films "Jurassic World 3" and "Life Events" laid a good start for the "hot" of the first long-term summer file of the year, and conveyed the strong demand for popular films and high-quality films to the upstream of the industry.
Wen | Zhao Li
Edited by | Li Jialei
Editor-in-charge | Du Simeng
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